It’s been over five years since we stepped into the “next generation” of gaming with the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. And, depending on who you ask, the decline of the Xbox has been fairly apparent as the ongoing rise of Xbox Game Pass and the availability of the console’s “exclusives” on PC — and pretty soon PlayStation, too — has only grown thanks to the company’s broad approach to supporting multiple platforms. However, it seems Xbox isn’t quite ready to step away from hardware. Rather, the next Xbox console will break new ground, as Microsoft says it cane play PC and Xbox games.
While rumors have been swirling for months at this point, we’ve finally been given our first real taste of what to expect from Microsoft’s next Xbox. Recently-appointed Xbox CEO Asha Sharma shared on X today that the new console, codenamed Project Helix, will “play your Xbox and PC games,” and that the gaming company plans to share more about what it is and what to expect at GDC later this month.
And that’s the kicker. We still know so little about the next generation of Xbox consoles. Sure, there are plenty of rumors, but with the ongoing chip shortage and skyrocketing RAM prices — they’ve gotten so bad that future laptops setups could completely change — a more gaming console that potentially doubles as a PC could help consumers justify the purchase and Xbox justify the price.
PC games are coming to the next Xbox
Most of the rumors we’ve been seeing over the past few months began in 2025, when Microsoft shared the first details about its plans to release an Xbox-branded version of ASUS’s ROG Ally. The ROG Xbox Ally X was an interesting take on Xbox gaming, not only offering access to PC games, but letting users play Xbox games, too, so long as they had a PC version. And that’s where it ceased to be an Xbox, as it couldn’t play Xbox-only games natively.
Of course, the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X were just part of the “This is an Xbox” campaign, in which the company highlighted all of the devices capable of playing Xbox games via the cloud. Plus, with the Xbox ROG Ally seeing the success it did at putting the Xbox UI on a portable Windows device, it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched that the company will take the next logical step of making its next console more of a PC, too. In fact, we’re already seeing other companies develop living-room friendly PCs with the reveal of the Steam Machine from Valve. Then there’s Xbox’s continued partnership with AMD. In a video celebrating the agreement, from June 2025, Sarah Bond, former President of Xbox, seemed to imply that next-generation Xbox consoles would not be tied to a single store.
While the ROG Xbox Ally can’t play native Xbox games, Bond assured fans that wouldn’t be the case for its future consoles. And if Microsoft does lean fully into making anything and everything an Xbox, then it will fundamentally change the how we play. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait long to find out more, as GDC kicks off on March 9, 2026.
